Food ingredients
Harness the power of flavor
In the food industry, flavor is everything, and to deliver outstanding sensory experiences requires careful engineering, a deep understanding of processes and the expertise to integrate solutions that work perfectly together. From mixing and homogenizing to achieve the perfect encapsulation through to spray drying – GEA is your partner of choice.
Your flavors, engineered for success
Your success is our focus. Whether you require a single piece of equipment or a complete line, our experts have an in-depth understanding of what really matters to you as a creator of flavors. From consistency, repeatability and fast changeover times to the ability to operate at the highest level with safety and efficiency front of mind, our process knowledge and in-house capabilities deliver wherever your operations are located.
Process expertise
Take advantage of GEA’s deep process expertise and leading technological advances. Coupled with the most comprehensive testing facility for spray drying, together we will engineer the future of flavor.
Repeatability in flavor processing
Our advanced process control solutions and precise engineering enable the components of your line to work in perfect harmony, ensuring the repeatability you need.
Safety at the forefront
Our dedication to keeping your people safe is unconditional. We can integrate at the highest safety levels – from fire safety systems to digital visual spray nozzle monitoring.
Getting the design right
The design of flavor lines prioritizes eliminating sharp edges and dead zones in machinery, pipework, and valve systems where even the smallest traces of product could collect. Careful attention is given to the type, number, and positioning of cleaning devices, ensuring maximum efficiency. Cleaning fluid tanks are precisely sized to hold just the right volume needed to clean the entire system thoroughly, minimizing changeover time. Even the choice of gasket materials is deliberate, ensuring they do not retain traces of product.
These design elements collectively optimize the Cleaning-In-Place (CIP) system, delivering fast product changeovers, reduced downtime, minimal waste, and lower water and detergent usage.
Sustainability in flavor spray drying defined
At GEA, sustainability is more than a watch word. By definition, it can relate to both financial stability and the pursuit of environmental and ecological balance, and with our solutions we endeavor to incorporate both. Our optimized solutions not only deliver the highest levels of production efficiency, leading to efficient ingredient usage in terms of yield, for example, but also feature energy saving innovations. GEA OptiPartner Advanced Process Control, for instance, make sure your production always runs at optimal efficiency, thereby saving energy, increasing efficiency and optimizing product moisture.
Ensuring repeatability in flavor processing
When producing flavors there is much opportunity for something to go wrong. An ingredient added too quickly into a mixing vessel, inconsistent temperature, insufficient mixing or incomplete homogenization can all have an effect further downstream that affects the outcome. Similarly, variations in mixing, homogenization or drying parameters can all have an effect that in some subtle way alters the product. All these parameters are critical to producing a consistent product. Precise engineering, recipe control and GEA OptiPartner can help rule out those deviations by controlling all the individual unit operations precisely.
Safety first for flavor production plants
Our experts focus on designing and configuring equipment and processing lines that match the required safety standards of the plant. A range of safety features is offered, tailored to the product characteristics, local regulations, and customer policies. These include the GEA Fire Safety System (compliant with SIL 2), surface cooling technology when necessary, visual and infrared cameras on spray nozzles, explosion vents, explosion suppression systems, and decoupling systems. Together, these features ensure the highest levels of plant safety for customers.
The essence of a flavor factory
At the heart of every flavor factory lies the spray dryer, but like all hearts in the world, even the strongest cannot go on forever. At Mother Murphy’s in Greensboro, North Carolina, it was time for an upgrade.
Key technologies in flavor processing
We assist in defining emulsification and spray-drying solutions tailored to optimize process capacity and yield, with a particular focus on the quality and stability of the final powdered flavor. Our experts work to reduce oil droplet size in flavor emulsions and fine-tune drying parameters to achieve efficient particle formation within the spray tower. Additionally, our mixers incorporate advanced features such as temperature control, variable shearing, and controlled atmospheres, enabling operations under reduced pressure or oxygen levels. We also support the development of alternative encapsulation techniques, including spray congealing (spray cooling) and fluidized bed coating. By leveraging our technologies, customers can consistently achieve uniform processing and packaging of flavor products across all recipes and production scales.
BATCH FORMULA® PRO high shear mixer
Mixing is crucial for consistent, high-quality flavor ingredients. Our integrated process control monitors key parameters to ensure product integrity and meet specifications.
High Pressure Homogenizer
GEA offers versatile, high pressure homogenizers for either batch or continuous processes. A range of configurations are available, including hygienic and aseptic, design options to ensure safe, consistent processing.
SD and FSD® spray dryers
The GEA FSD® multi-stage dryer is especially well suited to heat-sensitive products like flavors. Simple in design, the GEA conventional NIRO® spray dryer allows for a relatively fast change-over between products.
SmartFil M1 powder packer
The GEA SmartFil M1 has been developed to provide a wide range of filling configurations to meet the diverse needs of the flavor industry.
In the complex, ever-changing world of flavor development, your ability to engineer the finest quality end product is one element that remains a constant. At GEA, we understand your need for consistency, repeatability and flexibility, and have applied these attributes to our innovation process.
We consistently innovate to provide our customers with cutting edge production solutions.
We are investing repeatedly in optimizing solutions for flavor manufacturing to ensure high efficiency and high availability.
We have the flexibility as a complete solutions provider to deliver everything you need to succeed.
GEA – your flavors, engineered for success.
Products & Technologies
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Bag/Sack Powder Fillers
Our range of multi-wall bag/sack fillers is designed to pack powdered products at rates of less than 1 tonne/h up to more than 12 tonnes/h with an accuracy better than 10 g (0.35 oz). Our extensive experience with a wide range of powdered products and packaging types means that we can provide a solution to meet the most demanding powder filling r...
GEA Scan-Vibro Sifters
GEA manufactures a wide range of vibrating sifters that have been designed for use in the food, dairy, beverage, pharmaceutical, chemical, animal feed and pet food industries.
Hygienic valves & components
Hygienic valves from GEA form the core component of matrix-piped process plants. Thanks to a pioneering valve concept that sets standards for its flexibility, as well as the latest control and automation functions, our valves offer manufacturers maximum product safety and process reliability. All GEA hygienic valves are designed to be efficient a...
Jet pumps
Jet pumps, also referred to as ejectors, are devices for the conveyance, compression or mixing of gases, vapors, liquids or solids and for the production of vacuum in which a gaseous or liquid medium serves as the motive force.
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